


Kind of Grim, Also Dark.

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-04
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 23:00:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3706871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose going grimdark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> idek know what to call this so i just did a quote from the comic

At first there was something, she was something. Looking back, what else could she have done, but at the time it was always a choice, she had just chosen to take the leap into danger, fashioning herself a hero. A child, playing an adult, waving around loaded guns like toys, stupidly on the edge of murder and oblivion. Of course it was she was going to get hurt, she knew nothing of death. But things are never so black and white as this.

Rose knew what death was like. Rose had known from a very early age what death looked like. When her mother “self medicated” herself in and out of stupors, reeling and stumbling over what looked like a glass of water with an olive in it, that was a type of death. Once when Rose was very young and her mother was full of liquor and sleeping, she had taken her mother’s (empty) glass and made a tap water martini that tasted terrible, and when her mother awoke to the sight of her crying into a half full glass she grabbed Rose and cradled her and cried too. She learned that death did not always come from the outside. Some people were their own death sentences.

When Rose is overtaken by the dark she knows what it means. As soon as she knows, she is overtaken. Blackness is scary. Rose is no longer Rose. She is a consciousness inside a void. She is nothing in the midst of a great Something Else, and she is more alone than she’s ever been in her entire life. She cries like she did when she was little, but unlike when she was little, no one was there to console her. Her mother is dead, her mother, the drunk bastard who barely raised her, who she played elaborate mind games with, and worked so hard to avoid was dead. Her mother was quite often terrible at her job but Rose was the moon orbiting her sun, the smell of liquor on her breath be damned. It was hard for a little girl in the middle of nowhere, Rose had nearly no friends her own age, so it was always her and her mother and the woods howling bloody murder around them. Sometimes at night, when a certain animal would prowl too close she’d hear a pop and then in the morning there’s be a red river sunbathing into nothingness, but no body. She remembered the pictures, how her mother had been stained with not just… blood but also red wine and how fitting it was. This time there is a body.

Rose sobs and the noise rings through the void like screaming in an empty house. To lose one’s mother is a dreadful thing, and she vaguely thinks through her clouded mind that she is being given more time to think about, no grieve her dead mother than any of her other friends, but then fuck that. She is rose and they are them and this is now. Time is no longer a useful measure, nothing exists but her and she is screaming into nothing, and it could go on forever and it feels like it does. Then there is something else besides her and she is interrupted. Things are feeding into her consciousness, past the curtain of emotions currently hung around her. Ancient information, things long forgotten, but held by the universe. She knows, everything she ever imagined and more, the universe floats through her mind and she is glad that she no longer has corporeal form because she is sure that she would combust if she felt this much with her old body around her, holding her taut and rigid. She is so much more now, so much more than before, she knows now. She wonders if this means that she is dead, and this is the afterlife, maybe she is becoming part of the black sky she saw at night back on earth, maybe she could see her mother again. And she almost lets go.

But something pulls her back from the edge. She is angry. It starts off small, but by the time her cries are down to hiccups she is livid. She is going to kill Jack, she is going to kill the bastard that made her feel so small. She was still in shock when she was talking to Jade, but now she knows. She wants to kill the thing that killed her mother, she wants to see the red wine on the floor. Close around she feels beings, horrorterrors, the walls of the universe personified, wrap around her and she feels oddly safe. These beings hold Rose, they speak in their whispery language like crude oil on her soul, and they fuel her being. They are more than she is, she can feel it, they are the reason she is now. She feels vaguely as though she should be postulating, but there is no floor in her mind. She knows she can stay here in this gap forever if she wishes. The horrorterrors have chosen her, they want what she wants, and if that is to stay forever suspended they would oblige, but what she wants more than anything is to get revenge. And so she left the horrorterrors in the lurch and returned to seek selfish justice, which really isn’t justice at all. It is revenge.

She knew she would get hurt. She knew the darkness and the ash of her skin spelled the end for her yet she didn't stop, she didn't cease. Maybe she wanted to see how far she could go. One fact remains, this isn’t the last time Rose Lalonde dies.


	2. Chapter 2

Your mother is a first class alcoholic. Her whispers are chardonnay and she shouts vodka martinis. She likes to ignore you in exchange for strangers, kissing her reflection in the mirror. She whispers terms of endearment in your ear at night, so soft that in the morning you might actually believe them. She wakes up with her face pressed against your feet and lipstick smears on your bedspread.

She makes sure to get the stains out. Sometimes you sit next to her and watch her do it. You pick at your nail polish and she picks it up later, stumbling without a purpose. More often than not, she misses the mess and vacuums the clean areas of the house. You sit on the couch with your legs crossed and your heels clicking together. She grins at you, red smeared on her teeth.

She makes you ill.

You were in sixth grade when you first heard about Strider’s ongoing battle with ‘Bro’. Battles shared on hazy Houston rooftops and lacerations no mere 'sorry' could heal. You heard about how he would wake up each morning dreading the note always left on the counters, ones that told of future bruises and wounds and embarrassment. You had watched the messages pour in, shock etched across your face. You had always considered Dave’s familial life to be plain. Boring in the way that while the two of them were odd on their own, their relationship was purely that of a father and son. Dave’s brother had raised him from childhood. So to hear that he was so unpleasant behind the scenes came as a surprise.

You wrote about it in your journal until you heard your mother’s calls for you, so you go out to meet her. You know better than to hide.

She always finds you.

Your mother would play sick on a regular basis, her retches into the toilet the regular background music to your pen jotting across a piece of paper. You would ask her to quiet down in there, and she would. Maybe you never appreciated your mother as much as you should have. Didn’t appreciate her constant praise and gifts. Didn’t appreciate her acceptance. It’s hard to love your mother while still psychoanalyzing her every move. There was no time for you to be a daughter; you had to be a scientist.

There had been a broken martini glass on the floor for the past week. Your mother didn’t clean it up, yet still sweeping around it. It sat there for months on end until you picked up the shards of glass with quick fingers and quiet precision. Your mother smiled at you, the day after. She smiled. Just kept grinning. Like she was proud of you for doing something you would’ve been expected to do in any other household. She bought you two new journals the next day, and they sat on your desk for weeks, tied in pretty ribbon.

You walked in on your mother crying a week after she had given them to you. You forgot what it was like to hear her in pain. You could get used to it.

You graduated the eighth grade with flying colors, your lips painted black and your middle finger high up in defiance. No one saw it because no one was looking. Dave sent you a message saying, “you’re the star, it’s you” and your mouth twisted up something evil. He was right. You were the star.  
It was you.

Your mother is a quiet woman. She says very little, and when her conversations don’t require words, she doesn’t talk at all. While she is extremely quiet, she is also the loudest person you know. Her hair poofs up in a way that is entirely unflattering, her lips are always shining red, her eyes are large, and her clothing is always far too fancy for the occasion. You enjoy the annual Christmas photo taken with her, if only just to see the differences between your physique and hers. To compare the curve of her hips to the sharp angle of your shoulders. The slope of her chest to the flat plane of yours. The upward slant of her lips to the downward fall of yours.   
There’s never anyone to send the Christmas card to. You send a picture of it to Strider and he sends you one in return. His brothers’ arms wrapped tightly around him, staking vicious claim, tacky Christmas sweaters worn. You responded the right way, with laughter instead of worry. Everyone has their own way of dealing with crisis.   
For Dave it was ignoring it.

For you, it was head on confrontation. Your mother would play coy, shying away from the fact that anything was wrong in the first place. That her neglectful behaviour was just as abusive as Dave's brother's was. She would take you out for Chinese food, a dull smile always planted on her face and eyes glazed over from intoxication. It was her normal look.   
For you, head on confrontation was the way. You would tell her of her shortcomings, and she would barely even listen. For all your troubles, she would pretend she didn’t know what you were talking about. Then she would pat your cheeks softly and go to bed.

Strider sent you a message the same night, panicking. Alerting you that his brother had finally fallen over the edge into insanity. Bro came pawing into the room, touching him without permission. Lips pressed against pallid skin, whispers of encouragement as he wrapped his younger brother’s hand around him at the edge of dawn. Dave had seized up, tears rolling down his cheeks. But the older Strider just… didn’t stop. Didn’t stop when his brother thrashed around, pulling away, screaming for help. Just clamped his oversized hand down over his mouth and rutted against his side until he reached release.

TG: i think hes finally lost it  
TG: lalonde  
TG: im scared

A week later, your mother drank her weight in tequila. Her skin buzzing, her hands searching for contact. You begrudgingly sat in her hold, her fingers stroking your face. “So pretty, Rosie.”  
“Always been so pretty.”

But if only she could see you now.


End file.
